


For Saints Have Hands

by Siria



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Challenge: Porn Battle VIII, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-09
Updated: 2009-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:40:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah's hands are inelegant, imperfect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Saints Have Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Porn Battle VIII](http://oxoniensis.dreamwidth.org/10575.html).

Sarah's hands are inelegant, imperfect—her fingernails are ragged and her palms callused and stained with gun oil; the feel of everything she touches is mediated through burn marks and half-healed scars, the slight asymmetry of poorly-set bones. The underlying architecture is still sound, strong enough to get the job done, but her hands carry with them always the memory of what it's like to feel bone grind against bone; when the weather turns damp, they ache. She's had two decades' worth of lessons, harsh enough to make her face the world with fists clenched; she's forgotten the paradox of touch, and when the tips of James' fingers rest with such care against the line of her jaw and the curve of her neck, her head reels with the impact of this half-remembered sensation.

"Sarah," he murmurs, and her vision is a blur—barely over a concussion; her son the rest of her lifetime away from her; the gentle heat of his skin against hers—and is it any wonder she feels like she can't find a solid place to stand, when she's forgotten this much about the boundaries of her own body?

"Okay," she says, and exhales. "Yes." And she's given him permission—told James that he can peel off her filthy, sweat-stained tank top, tug her pants down to tangle around her thighs, press her down onto the mattress beneath his weight and warmth—but he kisses her instead. His kisses are calm and measured, with a hint here and there—in how he nips at her lower lip; in how his tongue runs delicately along the roof of her mouth—of the full measure of his devotion, and it's so unlike what Sarah has trained herself to expect that she closes her eyes and moans.

She says his name, and that seems to have been the real acceptance he was waiting for, because his hands are moving now, down to Sarah's sun-burned shoulders and the strong muscles of her arms, curving over her breasts and the too-sharp angles of her ribs. She lets him, delights in the warmth of his palms against her waist, and when he bends to suckle at one nipple through the worn-thin cotton of her top—mouth hot and wet, a thin scrape of teeth—Sarah lets her head roll back against the wall. It's been too long since someone touched her like this, an intimacy born of pleasure and not of pain, and if it has to happen like this, three months after the end of the world, nine years before its salvation, in a bunker at the edge of the desert, Sarah can't make herself regret it.

"Come on," she mumbles, "come on," and he presses her back against the wall. Sarah's desperate for this in a way she can't quite understand: doesn't know if it's the sex or James or the incongruity of it; if it's the wait or the way he holds her, not as if she's fragile but as if she's worthy of care. The concrete is rough and cool against her sweat-warm back, and this time she kisses him, tilting her face up to meet his while he works her jeans open with one awkward hand. Sarah kisses him, and as his fingers start to work warm circles onto the pale skin of her belly, she begins to touch him back—to learn the shape of his shoulder blades beneath the tattered remnants of his shirt, to know the length of his spine and how it curves into her hand, to feel how his breathing stutters when she strokes the flat line of his stomach. Her touch may be imperfect, but whatever her scars, the feel of James beneath her fingertips is all smooth solidity, and Sarah thinks she has found in him a strength to match against her own.

"Just like this," he tells her, "Sarah", and slides one big hand into her opened jeans and under the frayed fabric of her underwear. He stills for a moment, cupping her gently in the palm of his hand, and the friction and the pressure when Sarah bucks up against his touch is good enough to make her shiver. She feels over-heated, scalp prickling with fresh salt-sweat; anticipation makes her breath come faster, and he leans in to kiss her again as he starts to move his hand.

His range of movement isn't very large—his wrist is constricted by her clothing, by the position they're in—but the feel of two of his fingers working circles over her clit make her bite at his lower lip. Each brush of his fingers against her makes her wetter, makes her want more of his touch, and she wriggles her jeans down off her hips, shuddering when he immediately presses two fingers inside her. She's had nothing more than the touch of her own hand since Charley, and the stretch of James' fingers inside her makes her pull away from the kiss, gasping for air and her eyes widening.

"More," she says, "more," and Sarah's not begging for him but she's close to it, revelling in the feel of his fingers curling close inside her, and she wants him to use those fingers to make her come now. Later, she'll press him down onto the bare mattress and take him, later she'll rest her forehead against the curve of his collarbone and smell his sweat as she moves and wonder at how each breath feels different with him inside her, but for now there's this: the way her nerves spark with re-awakening sensation, and she shakes for him, comes for him, raises a shaking hand to his face and touches him back.


End file.
